


Nightmare

by rainbowbetty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst Dean Winchester, Cold, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Great Wall of Sam, Hell, Hurt Sam Winchester, Nightmares, Obsessive-Compulsive, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Purgatory, Rape/Non-con References, References to Suicide, References to Torture, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowbetty/pseuds/rainbowbetty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were many times Sam woke up screaming. And Dean never stopped feeling helpless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2009

Dean finds them buried in the "pharmacy" side of the duffle, and for a second he's so furious he can't see straight. Because it's weakness. It's weakness in a bottle, in pill form, and half the time they don't even take a fucking aspirin because they can just fucking deal with it, but this? With all the crap on their tail right now, with Lucifer and the angels ready to jump his ass into being Michael's meatsuit.

Sleeping pills.

Sam goes against everything he and Dean have ever had and lets fucking Lucifer out of Hell and suddenly he decides he's not getting enough nighty-night? What the absolute fuck.

His hand clenches hard on the bottle of pills and doesn't turn around when he hears Sam come in from outside behind him. Sam must have seen the tension in his shoulders, because he stops suddenly. "Hey. Dean, everything okay?"

Dean's lips press thin and he turns to face Sam, eyebrows raised, and he can't quite keep the ire out of his voice. "You, ah, you  _sleeping_  okay these days, Sam?"

Sam looks down automatically at the bottle of pills in Dean's hand, and his expression shifts. "Dean—"

"Fucking save it." He throws the bottle squarely at Sam's chest and shoulders past him, pushing Sam into the wall on his way out.

Sam is calling after him, but he tunes it out, doesn't want to hear any of it. It's too much. He's tired of the selfishness, just so fucking tired of it, and it never ends.

When he gets back to the room, it's late and Sam is sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands folded, staring at nothing. He looks up when Dean comes in. "I'm sorry," he says, "that I didn't tell you I was taking them. I knew you you'd react like this."

Dean won't look at him. He's still pissed, and doesn't feel like even having this conversation. "Sam, I really don't give a shit. Honestly. Do whatever the fuck you want, okay?" He sits down heavily in the chair across the room and pulls a boot up to his knee so he can undo the laces.

"Anyway, I threw them out. I flushed them."

Dean leans on his knee and looks evenly at Sam. "Well you shouldn't have done  _that._  Now what'll you do if you can't get a solid eight hours of wholesome shut-eye while the world goes to flaming  _shit_  around us?"

Sam visibly flinches and Dean's glad. He kicks off both shoes and goes through the motions of getting ready for bed, distantly aware that Sam pretty much just sits there staring at his hands until Dean announces he's shutting off the light. Only then does Sam seem to reluctantly scoot back against the headboard, still in his clothes, and lean against the pillows.

Dean shakes his head at his brother's stubbornness and shuts his eyes.

A few hours later, he's awoken by the sound of Sam screaming.

He jerks out of bed and with his gun already in his hand, his other hand protectively on Sam's heaving chest, having found its way there by sheer instinct. "Sam!" he chokes out. "Jesus."

Sam's eyes are screwed shut, his fingers twisted into the sheets like he's trying to anchor himself to something, and his mouth is moving silently. His head lashes violently from side to side.

Dean sets down the gun and grips Sam by the shoulders. "Sam!" he shouts. He shakes him, but Sam is rigid, paralyzed by the nightmare. He isn't screaming now, but he's making a sound that's almost worse, a low terrified whine deep in his throat, that matches the "N-n-n" in the way his lips are moving.

Dean's breath catches, and he does the only thing he can think of to snap his brother out of it. He raises a hand and smacks him, hard, across the face.

Sam startles, and his eyes open, wide and unseeing and terrified. Then they see Dean, and recognition flickers. Sam's face closes off, quickly hiding a mixture of shame and something else Dean can't place, and his whole body twists in on itself, shrinking back into the mattress, away from Dean's touch. "Leave me alone, Dean."

"Sammy?"

"You can't." He sounds angry, but there are tears leaking from his eyes.

Dean stands next to the bed chewing his lip. He wants to fix it, whatever it is, to try and make everything better, but he's so damn tired of being pushed away. "Okay," he says, with a raw edge to his voice. "If you need to…" He's not sure what he's offering. Need to talk about it? Need a shoulder to cry on? It's clear Sam doesn't want or need anything from him that used to come so naturally. Just being there in the middle of the night, when Sam was younger, just the sound of his voice or a reassuring hand on his back used to be all it took to chase nightmares away. He remembers Sammy sliding into his bed, nudging his chin against Dean's chest and curling his feet around his shins for comfort. It was so simple.

Dean feels the gulf between them like a solid mass of emptiness. Then Sam says something into his pillow, so quiet that Dean has to take a step closer and say, "What?"

"It's Lucifer," Sam says again, no louder but turning slightly toward him. "When I'm asleep. He-he tries to…"

"Get you to say yes?"

Sam nods.

Dean sits down on the bed and Sam shifts over to make room.

"That's why the pills?" Dean guesses.

Sam takes a shaky breath. "I'm sorry. I am. If I take enough of them I don't dream and he doesn't find me."

That makes Dean's chest clench in sympathy and hate for the bastard.  _Fuck this._ Then something terrible occurs to him.

"Sam."

Sam turns his face back into the pillow. But  _oh god,_  now that it's in his head he can't not ask it.

"Sam, did you—did you—how did you figure out how many to..."  _Fuck._  "Sammy,  _did you try and kill yourself?"_

He sees the side of Sam's face twist up like he's trying to hold it back and not really succeeding.

Everything in Dean wants to reach out and draw Sam close like always, hold him, fix him, fix this. But he doesn't. He waits, frozen, on the edge of the bed.

"H-he brought me back. Every time."

 _Every time._  It's like he's been punched in the stomach because for a moment, he can't breathe, can't think. Dean bends in two where he sits on the bed, then stands up and just stands there with his back to his brother.

"When we were apart," Dean says at last. It's not really a question. Something in him knows.

"I had to  _try_ , Dean."

He shakes his head angrily. "What the  _fuck_  am I supposed to do with this, Sam?"

Sam turns over and props himself up on one elbow to look at him incredulously. "What are  _you_  supposed to do? How about nothing! I never asked for any of this. I was handling it, Dean. I was handling it just fine. I didn't  _ask_  you to step in like you have all freaking answers and act like you know what's best. Because you know what? You have no idea. You have  _no idea_  what I'm dealing with."

"No, you know what, I don't! Because you  _lie_ , Sam. About everything!"

"I don't lie!"

"Well, I sure as hell ain't hearing a whole lot of truth!"

"Really Dean? You want truth?" He takes a deep breath. "H-he gets inside my head. Way inside. He twists all my memories, everything good I ever had, Jess, Dad, Bobby, y-you. Everything. And it's relentless. He makes promises and threats, and shows me the things he'll do. Dean." He looks up at Dean pleadingly. "Dean, the things he'll do to  _you_ , I'd rather die, a thousand times over, I would. But I can't. We just have to keep running and hiding."

Dean swallows. Sam runs a hand through hair that's damp with sweat, and Dean can see that he's shaking.

He's not sure what happened to the gulf he couldn't cross before, maybe it's still there, but he sits back down on the bed beside Sam. "C'mere," he says, and pulls his little brother up by the arms, folds him into his chest and holds him there just like it was always this simple. And Sam breaks. He presses his face against Dean's shoulder and lets everything go, cries wet and messy into his t-shirt and Dean holds him, his fists solid against his back and his cheek pressed against Sam's hair.

The next day, Dean pulls out all the stops on a cute drug rep with access to Halcion samples, and he slips the new stash back into the duffle without a word.


	2. 2010

Sometimes Dean thinks of this guy who looks like his brother as "Sam." Sam with air quotes. Sam who doesn't give a shit.

Sam who apparently doesn't _need_ to sleep but who goes through the motions, and who still wakes up screaming. And that scares Dean more than anything, because someone who's not his brother, who's completely hollow and soulless inside, shouldn't scream like that.

He tries not to think too hard about what it means. He tries not to hear it, because it sounds like Sam, and it makes him think about  _Sam_  screaming. And he knows his Sam is screaming. He is.

 _This_  Sam jerks awake, the scream cut-off and half-trapped in his throat, eyes wild and disoriented until the coldness slams back into place. He looks across the room at Dean, silently assessing him, then flips over and apparently goes back to sleep.

After the third night it happens, when the stifled scream wakes him up again, Dean grits his teeth and gets out of bed to go searching for the supply of sleeping pills, thinking okay, this is his life now. A brother trapped in Hell and a dead-inside soulless robot that has nightmares. Probably about some kitten he never got a chance to drown. So now Dean is just going to be that guy who drinks too much and then drugs himself into unconsciousness at night, and the universe can suck it.

He finds the pills at the bottom of the duffle, where Sam –  _his_  Sam – left them, and he's not sure what to do with the surge of feelings that brings up in him. He's half tempted to try and kill them with alcohol.

Behind him, he hears RoboSam abruptly throw the blankets off his bed and head into the bathroom.

 _Awesome,_  Dean thinks, wondering how long he'll have to fucking wait now to get a drink of water to take a goddamn pill. He considers washing it down with booze. Also considers just dry swallowing it.

Through the door, he hears the sink running. Then the sound of his brother retching. And that's new.

It makes his chest hurt. He wishes it didn't sound so goddamn much like  _Sam_.

He gets up and walks over to the bathroom door. He stands outside of it, awkwardly hesitating for a moment, not sure if he's listening or checking or  _what_. Finally, he knocks once. "Sam? You… you okay in there?"

There's no answer. Then a shaky voice that's trying not to waver. "Fine, Dean."

"What happened?"

No answer again. Then he hears Sam throwing up, and he can't just  _stand_  there. He says, "Sam, I'm coming in, okay?"

He turns the knob and pushes the door in cautiously, and finds the guy who looks like his brother holding himself up against the sink and leaning over the toilet, and his arm is trembling. He looks up at Dean, his eyes glassy, and then quickly glances back down.

"Sam? What's going on?"

Sam shakes his head and draws the back of his hand over his mouth. "Nothing you need to worry about, Dean. Go on back to bed. Sorry I woke you."

Dean stands in the doorway uncertainly. It's uncanny, really. The words, the voice, the attitude are all wrong, especially the way he says Dean's name, it's not Sam. But pieces of him are. And caught in this rare, moment of vulnerability, the lines are drawn so close that this Sam could actually  _be_  his brother. Dean could let himself pretend, just for a few minutes. The temptation to do so is almost completely overwhelming.

"Bad dream?" Dean ventures, coming over to the sink beside Sam.

Sam is looking down, his long hair hiding his eyes, eyes that might very well show cold, calculating precision, but Dean pretends they're Sam's warm hazel eyes filled with need and feeling. Sam doesn't look up, just remains there, clutching the edge of the sink to steady himself. "Yeah," he says. "Really bad dream. I get them. Sometimes. Not a big deal."

"Right," Dean says, sarcastically. "Clearly."

Sam huffs a laugh. "Sucks, actually. It's the only time I can't-"

He looks up at Dean suddenly, and there's a flicker of something across his face before he looks away again. Dean saw it, it was unmistakable.  _Fear._  But that can't be right. Not from this Sam.

Dean puts a hand on his elbow. "Sam? Talk to me." Be there. Be  _something_  there. Be  _my Sam._

Sam tries to lock it down, get his control back. He straightens his back, his shoulders, takes a breath, even smiles that false smile, but his eyes are haunted like Dean's never seen before. "Hell," he says at last. "It's Hell, Dean. I dream about Hell. And it's  _really bad._  Worse than I'm sure it was for you."

 _I'm sure,_  he's tempted to cut in bitterly, bluntly, to cut him down. But this is Sam without empathy. He can't help it, so Dean just listens.

"During the day, you know, I can tell myself it's over. That it doesn't matter. And that works. But I can't control it at night. It's literally like being right back there. In the cage. With him."

"Lucifer."

A look of actual pain crosses Sam's face, and he looks away.

"You remember Hell. Being tortured." Dean hates himself a little for pushing it, but the novelty of seeing vulnerability and emotion of any kind from this Sam makes him want to keep prodding, almost out of curiosity, just to see if he'll keep reacting.

Sam looks up and meets Dean's eyes, and his are locked-down precision cold again. "At night," he says flatly, "I can see everything he's doing to the other Sam. And it's  _beyond_  horrifying."

_Oh god. Sammy._

Dean's breath catches. He stumbles backward through the open bathroom door, grasping for the handle and missing it. There's not enough air in the entire room all of a sudden, and he has to get out.

His fingers fumble to unscrew the cap of the flask in the cold night air, leaning against the railing outside their hotel room, and he takes a long pull of the strong liquid. Tears sting the backs of his eyes. "Fuck," he whispers. "Sammy,  _fuck._  I'm so sorry. I'm going to get you out. I swear, I'll get you out, man. I'll find a way."

He doesn't go back inside until he's sure, completely sure, that the  _thing_  that's not his brother is asleep again.


	3. 2010 (Wall)

His head is bleeding. It barely registers. It's an inconvenience. He stalks the old man like he would any other hunt. It's methodical. He's good at this. Efficient. He lands a quick, disabling blow and secures the old man to the chair. He raises the knife to kill.

_Son, I been like a father to you!_

Sam wakes up screaming something unintelligible, drenched in sweat, heart hammering. After a moment, he's aware of Dean's hands on his shoulders, Dean saying his name.

"Dean?"

"Right here, man."

Sam exhales, looks around at the darkened hotel room, still disoriented. "Jesus, Dean. Bobby, did I... I didn't…?"

Dean's expression darkens then, because he knows what this is. "No, Bobby's fine.  _You_  didn't do anything. Sam. You know that."

He can still feel the weight of the knife in his hand, still smell the incense from the ritual and the candles. The incantation is still on his lips.

Sam frowns, but he nods once, his eyes flicking down, and Dean wants to rip Cas' head off for filling in Sam's missing year with all the havoc Soulless caused.

Sam puts a hand up to the side of his head as if he half-expects it to come away bloody. Dean catches his wrist and pulls Sam's hand down to his lap, squeezing Sam's fingers inside his own.

"No scratching," he says firmly.

"It's bleeding."

Dean looks at him strangely. "You're okay." He bends Sam's head toward him anyway, feeling for injury.

"No," Sam says, shaking him off. "I mean. Inside my head."

"That sounds like scratching.

"I swear, I wasn't-"

"Just try not to think about it. Think about… Hey! Think about that chick we saw in Hooters with the green mole." He grins and points a finger at the involuntary smile Sam tries to keep off his face. "Uh huh? See? You can't  _not_  think about the green mole!"

He smacks Sam's knee and gets up to go get him a glass of water.

He expected it to be bad. Death all but laid it out for him. If he got Sam back at all, it could be Sam in bloody shards and shattered pieces. But it would still be Sam. And let  _him_  be the one holding Sam together. Let Sam know it was  _Dean_  that had him, not Lucifer. If there was even enough of Sam left to know that, Dean had to believe he could somehow make Sam be okay.

He's terrified of the wall. He's more terrified of the great unknown that threatens his brother behind it. Terrified of it coming down and burying Sam in two hundred years of Hell. But he's always taken care of his brother. This is just one more monster in the closet that he'll have to flush out with a .45.

When he gets back to Sam's bed with water, Sam is leaning forward with his head in his hands, and Dean's heart sinks.

"Dean, I can't ever be sorry enough."

Dean can feel his hands starting to shake. He sets the glass down on the table between the beds and rubs his hands fervently against his thighs as he sits back down next to his brother. They've been through this, over and over, and every time he's convinced Sam is going to find the weak spot in the wall that will bring it all down. "Don't do this, Sam. It's behind the wall. Leave it behind the wall.  _Please._  I'm asking you. _"_

"I let you get turned. I wanted that."

"No,  _you_  didn't.  _You_  wouldn't have left me like that. I don't know what Cas told you, but it wasn't you, Sam. Trust me when I tell you this. It wasn't  _you._ It was a dickhead who looked like you and... and used your deodorant."

"Can I just... ask you one thing?"

Dean hesitates. But Sam is looking at him with those eyes, his little-brother eyes that are begging Dean to let him have this, this one thing, whatever it is. He sighs and raises his eyebrows signaling  _yes, what._

"That whole time. What did you  _think_  of me?"

It catches him off guard. It takes him back, to that first  _off_  embrace, to all the doubts, the uncertainties, the terrible  _wrongness_  of living with not-Sam.

"I—" He frowns, catching hold of both of Sam's hands. "I thought—I thought that—I don't know, Sam. I can't answer that. You weren't here. Once I found out your soul was still in Hell, that you'd been in Hell all that time, I just about lost my mind. I would have done anything to get you out, whereas this other guy up here? He was some other guy. You weren't here. I don't know. Is that enough? Can you just leave it at that?"

Sam shakes his head, looking lost. "I don't… remember any of it. This past year, or... or Lucifer's cage, any of it."

"Well, that's good. Frankly, I hope you don't  _ever_  remember."

Sam chews his bottom lip. " _You_  remember Hell."

"Not when I can help it."

"But what if you couldn't, Dean?"

"Then I'd be glad!" But it's not enough, not for Sam, and he knows it. Dean feels like he's dancing on a land mine. How much is too much to say? Is pleading with Sam not to think about Lucifer inviting him to do  _nothing but?_  Is it like asking him not to think about pink elephants? How do you test the strength of a wall that's holding back a tide of torture and insanity?

You don't. You don't touch it. You stay as far the hell away from it as fucking possible. But Dean knows his brother, and Sam has always been a scab picker.

Except. Dean looks at Sam, who is worrying aimlessly at a loose thread on the surface of the hotel comforter.  _Except_  during Sam's germ phase. Dean has to fight down a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Yeah, so, uh. The potential for infection, we talked about that, right? Why it's so important not to scratch?"

Sam's hand freezes on the loose thread. "What? No. What do you mean?" He frowns up at Dean, and it's so comically classic OCD Sam that Dean has to fight to keep his best  _lie_  face on. Because it's important. And it's  _not funny._  It's life or death. Death called the odds 75 percent. That thought sobers him right back up.

"If you pick at the wall, you know, at the memories behind it, it can… scab over. Get infected. It can, um. Cause, like a cancer."

He sees a shadow pass over Sam's face, and part of him is immediately sorry, because hasn't Sam been through enough? And then he sees the faint hint of a grin that Sam's giving him, the narrowed eyes, the way he's shaking his head in disbelief at his asshole brother.

" _Seriously_ , Dean? That's the best you can do?"

Dean seizes a pillow from Sam's bed and whacks him with it. "Just don't scratch the goddamn wall, asshole! Okay?"

"I said I wouldn't!

Dean tackles him full on, laying Sam out against the mattress and pinning him with his knee as Sam struggles to shove him off, laughing harder than Dean has heard in years.

"Okay! Christ, Dean! I said  _okay!"_

Dean squeezes the back of his neck affectionately and lets him up.

Later that same night, Sam wakes screaming from another nightmare and then convulses in a seizure. Dean repeats Sam's name over and over, pleading with him to come back, be okay, because he's never been so scared of losing anyone, and oh please not again, not again.


	4. 2010 (Wall)

There are two pills in the hand Dean is holding out to Sam, and in his other hand is a glass of water. "Take these," he says.

"What are they?"

"I'm surprised you don't recognize them. You two have quite a history."

"Sleeping pills? Why?"

"No dreams, no seizures." He presses them into Sam's hand. "Here. For once in your life, don't argue with me."

"Dean, I don't want them. Dreaming isn't technically scratching, and it's the only way I can get glimpses of what I did while I was walking around up here without a soul. I  _need_  to remember."

"Yeah, well I need you to  _not_   _die."_  It comes out angry, but he's not. He's exhausted. He's well beyond his limit with panic and worry.

Sam's tone softens and he tilts his head to take in his brother's creased brow and the circles under his eyes. "I'm okay, Dean."

"I know. You're peachy. So just humor me and take the damn pills."

Sam sighs. He looks down at the pills Dean has put in his hand, then back at his brother. "This is important to you."

"Sam."

"Okay."

Dean exhales, feeling a measure of relief wash over him, thinking maybe, just maybe, this is the answer. They can get a handle on this. He's thinking that a lifetime of pills and dreamless sleep is a bargain compared to the alternative, because he has a pretty good idea what the alternative entails.

Sam folds his hands over his chest that night and sleeps. He sleeps all damn night long, and when Dean wakes up in the morning, and it's  _morning_ , and Sam is still breathing evenly and peacefully in the bed next to his, he wants to freaking run outside and in his bare feet and shout freaking halleluiah into the dewy morning sky. But he just holds the joy close inside, treasuring it like something precious and rare.

There's coffee in the room, and Dean fills the pot with water, setting it to brew while humming to himself. He hears Sam stirring behind him. He turns and sees his bleary baby brother sit up in bed, blinking, looking almost dumbfounded by the daylight.

"I slept," he says with a note of disbelief in his voice.

"Yeah you did!" Dean confirms. "How'd that feel?"

Sam considers it, running a hand over his face and through his hair. "Felt fucking... awesome."

"What say we do it again tonight?"

"Yeah. Deal." He squints across the room at Dean. "Are you making  _coffee?"_

"Like a boss."

It's a good day. Until it all goes to shit.

Near the middle of the afternoon, Sam's hands freeze over the laptop keys and his eyes glaze over. Dean's about to make a crack about too much sleep not agreeing with him, but then he looks at Sam, really  _looks_  at him, and he can tell something's not right.

"Sam?"

Sam looks up at Dean, but his gaze goes right  _through_  him without seeing him. Then Sam's expression contorts in horror. His hands go to the edge of the table, sweeping the laptop to the floor, and he jolts up backward out of his chair, stumbling over it and landing on the floor his back. He scrabbles backward, and his hands and arms come up over his head.  _"No!_ " It's the only word Dean recognizes. The rest of it is jumbled together, rushed out, in a language he doesn't understand but somehow recognizes.

 _Enochian,_ some corner of his brain supplies, sending a chill through him at the realization.  _It's Enochian._

Because of course it is. It's only thing that would have been spoken to Sam for hundreds of years, if he were spoken to at all.

Dean fights down bile, leaping around the downed chair to reach his brother who's cowering from nothing. He grabs Sam's arms, and then realizes his mistake when the contact only escalates Sam's panic. He fights Dean's hands away desperately, pleading in the unfamiliar language. Sam's eyes are wide and wild, all blown pupils. He shrinks back until he's cornered himself against the hotel room wall.

Dean takes his hands away, crouching in front of Sam, murmuring to him, calling to him, trying to meet his terrified, unseeing eyes.

Finally, a shudder goes through Sam and he goes limp, leaning up against the wall, his hands splayed to the floor, breathing hard. He looks directly at Dean.

"D-Dean?"

Dean runs both his hands through his hair, pulls one hand over his face. "Yeah, Sam. Yeah, 's me." He reaches a hand out to Sam and Sam takes it, lets himself be pulled to his feet and held steady while Dean rights the chair he knocked over.

He sits, and Dean picks up his laptop, and they don't say anything while Dean tries the power button.

He starts watching Sam for signs that a seizure is coming. It'll be when he starts touching his forehead and the bridge of his nose, blinking too fast or too often.

Sam just props his head in his hand against the table. Finally, the silence is too much, and Dean says, "So you speak Enochian. That's handy."

Sam's quiet, his lips pressed together, his eyes flickering with some memory Dean doesn't want him to have. Dean wants to scrub all of it from his mind, or better yet, make it not have happened to Sam at all.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but Sam cuts him off.

"It's getting worse," he says.

"No," Dean says. "No! Not really. It's not  _worse._  Think about how much worse it could be."

Sam picks his head up and narrows his eyes at him.

"It's  _not_   _worse."_  Dean clears his throat, not liking the way his voice sounds.

Sam sets his jaw and takes a deep breath in through his nose, and there are tears in his eyes, but he says, "Yeah. Sure, man. You're probably right."


	5. 2011 (Post-Wall)

Sam hasn't screamed at night since the wall came down.

Dean hears him bolt awake, clutching both his arms to his knees and gasping for breath, and he makes a strangled keening sound, as if he can't let himself make noise, as if the  _terror_  won't let the horror out. It's the worst thing Dean's ever heard in his life. And it's the first time he's let himself acknowledge that there is something so  _broken_  where Sam, where his brother, should be, and it almost finishes him.

_Sam_ isn't broken. The thought won't even fit inside Dean's head. Sam is stronger than anyone he knows. Sam took on Lucifer and the apocalypse and won. Sam survived Hell. He  _survived_. If it takes everything Dean has to make him whole again then he will.

During the day, Sam digs his thumb into the scar on his hand and buries his head in his chest until the hallucinations stop. It's a weird system, but it works, and he knows it's working because Sam jokes about it. That's always been their barometer for how fucked things are, and as long as white rabbits and hookah-smoking caterpillars remain a regular mainstay of their vocabulary, Dean knows Sam is dealing.

But Sam has no defense against sleep. All his careful coping mechanisms fall away and every sick and evil, soul-crushing atrocity comes down on him in full force. But he doesn't scream. For some ungodly reason, he can't scream. He curls in on himself and keens, trapped between dreaming and reliving, clutching his fingers through his hair, squeezing his arms to his chest and gasping until morning when he can see the daylight again and remember he's alive.

Dean curses the angel, he refuses to even  _think_  the bastard's name for doing this to Sam, as he watches the breakdown happen night after night.

It's morning again, and the pale light is just beginning to stream in through the open window of the bedroom they share at Bobby's. Dean is sitting on the floor next to Sam's bed and leans his head back against the mattress, letting the box spring dig into the small of his back. He closes his eyes for a second, feeling the grit behind his eyelids and the dizzy fog of last night's exhaustion. Sam's breath exhales against his hair, slow and even, a rare moment of calm contrasted with just a few hours ago.

He should sleep now, too, he knows. He should move to the other bed and collapse, grab sleep for as long as he can. But instead he reaches up and feels for Sam's wide, warm hand beside the pillow, glad to find it limp and loose on top of the blanket instead of balled into a fist. He runs his hand over the back of Sam's, then leans forward to climb to his feet, feeling slower than an old man.

"Y'okay, De'?" Sam slurs. His eyes are closed and his face half-hidden by the side of his arm.

"Shit, I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"Nah, couldn' sleep. You snore."

"I don't…! You…" Dean sputters, so glad for the banter that's as easy to slide into as old jeans, and just as comforting. "You smell," he finishes lamely.

Sam smiles. His eyes are still closed. Dean reaches down squeezes the muscle between his brother's neck and shoulder. "I'll make coffee," he says. " _Lots_ of coffee. Strong?"

"Strong."

"You got it."

And he's not even talking about the coffee.

Sam comes downstairs about an hour later, looking like he hasn't slept for weeks, and Dean sets a cup of coffee down on the table for him.

"Strong enough to eat through your intestines," Dean says proudly.

And Sam winces.

Dean inhales sharply, and Sam sees, and his breathing picks up speed. "Dean," he says, "no. No, I'm sorry. Don't look like that."

"It was a dumb thing to say."

"Please don't treat me like this. Like I'm going to break."

"Well. Are you?" He knows it's not fair, but as soon as it's out of his mouth he wonders. Maybe pretending Sam is fine isn't doing his nightmares any favors.

"No!" He looks down at his hand. Then says again, more softly, "No. I've got it. I'm okay. Well. As okay as can be expected. I guess."

Dean turns to the counter and refills his own mug with the hairy-balls coffee, then pulls out a chair and sits at the table. After a moment's hesitation, Sam sits down across from him, tapping his fingers nervously against the handle of the coffee cup and avoiding Dean's eyes.

"You have nightmares from it every night, Sam.  _Every night."_

"You had nightmares."

Dean chokes out something like a laugh. "Not like yours."

Sam presses his lips together and says nothing.

"Look, I don't know how much you remember or… or know, but… Sam, you don't  _scream._  Actually, it's like you're trying to, or you want to, but you won't let yourself. And that's creepy."

Sam shifts his eyes, looking like he's gone a few shades paler.

"Can you talk about it?"

"No."

"Do you want to  _try?"_

The coffee is sitting untouched, unacknowledged between Sam's hands, as if he's forgotten it's there. "You remember, when you got back and I asked you to talk to me about Hell, that you told me I wouldn't be able to understand? That there was no way to really understand unless I'd been there?"

He doesn't really remember saying that, but it sounds like something he might have said, maybe an excuse he would have given Sam to use instead of talking about Hell. He would have rather done anything but talk about what he did down there, and that hasn't changed. But he'd go  _back_  to Hell if it meant helping Sam cope with this. So he says, "Yeah. Sure, I guess."

Sam shakes his head. "I get that. Even if I wanted to talk about it–- _which I don't."_  He looks up at Dean pointedly and Dean nods, understanding. "It doesn't translate. I mean…"

"Yeah, I know."

He gestures weakly with one hand. "I mean, a meat hook  _here,_  it's… it's a meat hook. It's not… it doesn't…"

Dean reaches across the table and takes hold of Sam's hand. He runs his thumb over the rough bumps of Sam's knuckles. "Hey. I know. I get it. You and me, we might be the only two people on the planet who get it, but I do, I get it. A knife up here is just a knife. It's not going to do anything more than hurt you or kill you. Pain is just pain, right? Not like below."

"And fire is--is just... fire."

"None of it can get at your soul up here."

Sam lets out a shaky sob on the word _y-yeah_ and Dean's heart breaks.


	6. 2011 (Post-Shift)

_"Sammy,"_  he whispers.

He can feel hands, cold hands on his hair, his face, in a way that's too intimate, too familiar. Owning, touching, hurting. Sam draws into himself, retreating as far as possible.

_"You have such a beautiful soul, you know that Sammy?"_

The scream claws at his throat, the one he doesn't dare let out because it's never been worth it, not once.

Lucifer's breath is hot against his neck, his frigid hands possessive and taking.

 _"Made for me. Mine to break,"_  he hisses in Sam's ear.  _"Say it."_

Cas buries his head in the hospital-issued pillow, his fist pressed against his mouth to muffle the scream, but nothing stops the barrage of memories playing through his mind.

Miles away, Sam wakes up screaming from the same echo of Lucifer's form looming over him, bearing down on him.

"Hey! Sam. Sammy!"

He's sitting up, he doesn't remember sitting up, but he exhales and clutches Dean's arms and lets Dean steady him. Dean pulls him close, and an irrational wave of emotion washes over Sam, a sense of being so very grateful for  _Dean_ , the way Dean feels and smells and sounds and moves and is always, _always_  there when he wakes up unable to breathe in those first few moment of incoherent terror.

Without understanding why, Sam bursts into tears. Dean doesn't say anything, he waits it out, rubbing his brother's back in reassuring circles.

"You were screaming," Dean observes, his voice gentle.

"Sorry," Sam says, suddenly embarrassed, leaning back and bringing his shoulder up to wipe his nose against the arm of his tee. "Sorry, I didn't mean to."

"No, It's good. I mean compared to… It's okay, Sam. Bad one?"

Sam stiffens almost imperceptibly. "I don't remember."

"Hey, you don't have to tell me. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Right?"

Sam snorts. "Vegas." His eyes drift to the opposite wall.

Dean ducks his head and catches Sam's gaze. "Hey. You seeing him?"

"What? No. No, whatever Cas did, it worked." He gives Dean a halfhearted smile. "All my marbles are back in the bag. Crazy train's in the station."

Dean looks like he doesn't quite buy it.

"Really. He's gone."

"And so, the nightmares? We're just going to pretend like those aren't happening?"

"Dean."

"Look, I understand denial. If that's the game, by all means deal me in so I can play along."

"Dean, it's over. Lucifer has left the building. My brain's not trying to kill me anymore."

"Okay, so can we maybe dial it back a notch then? Your life's not in danger, great. So let's just… take a minute here."

"Meaning what?"

"We don't ever  _stop_ , Sam. Nothing ever lets up for us. I mean, you're back, man. From Hell."

"Yeah. Great. So, we move on."

"Did it ever occur to you that might not exactly be  _normal?"_

Sam frowns and shakes his head, not understanding. "What the hell is normal with us?"

"Normal would be," Dean waves a hand, "I don't know, maybe to  _have_  nightmares. To be scared shitless of all the crap Lucifer put you through."

Sam looks at him blankly. Then he shoves the blankets off the bed and pushes past Dean, muttering, "Gonna go take a shower."

Dean watches the door click shut between them. "Well, that's awesome."

 

* * *

"Doctor Alvin Leaky," Dean reads from the piece of torn notebook paper before sliding it across the table to Sam. "How great is that name? Specializes in trauma, PTSD, panic disorders, and a bunch of other head crap, but plus,  _bonus_ —" he grins at Sam who is looking at the scrap of paper skeptically, "dude's a hunter. Or, well, was anyway. I think he's like a hundred and eighty by now or something, but the point is, you can talk to him."

Sam's eyes are closed off, his expression guarded. "And why exactly would I do that?"

Dean looks a little taken aback. "Be…cause he can  _help_  you, dumbass."

"Help with  _what,_  Dean? The fact that I went to Hell?"

"Sam, it doesn't hurt to talk to the guy." He pulls the paper back toward himself and picks up a pen, adding the man's address below his phone number and underscoring it twice. "It's on the way to follow up with our lead on Dick, so you might as well stop in."

Sam takes an uneasy breath. "Thanks for… checking into that, Dean. I appreciate it. What you're trying to do. But I really don't think it's our kind of scene."

"Well why can't it be? Huh? This is actually right up your alley, this whole talking and sharing thing."

"Maybe that's not me anymore. Maybe… you actually had the right idea, you know. What did you say, shove it all down and let it come out in spurts of anger and alcoholism?"

"Yeah, Sam, that sounds even less healthy coming out of your mouth. Listen man, I just want you to be okay."

"I am okay."

"I don't think you are. I think you're pretending, and you're doing a piss-poor job of it."

"Dean, I'm fine _._  And even if I weren't, nothing's ever been done to me that I didn't deserve. So just let it go."

Dean opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and as he watches Sam step away from the table and walk out of the room, leaving him sitting there speechless and dumbfounded, he has to actually work at closing it again.

 

* * *

Running gives  _him_  control over how fast his heart beats, how hard he breathes. He jogs to a stop in front of the cabin, feeling the muscle pounding against his ribs and the blood rushing furiously through the artery at his throat. Sweat makes his shirt cling to his chest, cooling fast in the early morning air.

The sun will be up soon. He should go in before Dean wakes up and finds him gone, makes him worry. He bites the inside of his cheek. Dean's worried. Dean knows. Dean will have that look. He can't face it, not yet.

Heart hammering, Sam draws in another breath. And runs.


	7. 2011

Sam lets the stream of hot water from the shower bead down onto his scalp, tracking warm pathways through his hair.

_One-thousand-six-hundred-thirty-two. One-thousand-six-hundred-thirty-three._

He keeps the count steady in his head, as constant as his heartbeat.

_One-thousand-six-hundred-thirty-four._

He needs the routine, the comfort of doing the same thing the same way, the same number of times each time. Each number has a task, a prescribed set of movements, and nothing is unpredictable. Nothing is unsafe. Nothing hurts.

A knock on the door startles him out of the moment and makes him drop the count, and suddenly his heartbeat isn't steady anymore.

"Sam?"

"I'm in the  _shower_ , Dean," he calls, frantically trying to remember the number that will keep his heart from racing.

"It's five in the frigging morning. What are you  _doing?"_

Sam gives up and shuts off the water. He reaches for the towel, letting a puff of steam escape from behind the curtain and bringing up rows of goosebumps along his damp skin.  _Shit._  He's supposed to grab the towel  _before_  turning off the water. Order keeps the panic at arm's length, and he can feel it beginning to creep in through the cracks in the routine.

Lucifer's face flashes in front of his, teeth bared in a smile, and he squeezes his eyes shut.  _Three. Six. Twelve. Twenty-four. Forty-eight._

"Sam?"

"Just a sec." He quickly yanks the towel off the rack and wraps it around his waist. When he opens the bathroom door, Dean is standing in the hall with his arms folded over his chest. Sam looks down, won't meet Dean's eyes because he doesn't want to see the concern there. He tries to edge past his brother through the hall.

"Okay, stop. Just stop." Dean grabs Sam's arm and pulls him back. "We're not doing this."

Sam goes completely passive. His shoulders drop, and he looks at Dean with a blank expression. "Doing what?"

Dean frowns at him. "What's going on with you?"

"Nothing's going on with me."

"Sam." Dean opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. Finally, he says, "This isn't  _you."_

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Dean has the terrifying sense that he's grasping again, looking into eyes that aren't there and grasping for the soul of his little brother. But instead of reaching into Hell for him, Hell has managed to reach out and close its fist around Sam, snuffing the light from his eyes and dragging him back down.

Sam slips out from under Dean's gaze and retreats down the hall toward the bedroom.

"You didn't deserve it," Dean says to Sam's back. "Not any of it."

Sam pretends he didn't hear.

 

* * *

He wakes up screaming, his arms flailing out and striking at nothing. Dean catches hold of his wrists and holds them until Sam realizes he was dreaming and stops fighting. Then he pulls away from Dean, muttering, "Don't—don't touch me. Don't. It hurts."

Dean draws back like he's been hit.

He can't. He can't do this. Dean runs to the bathroom and drops to his knees in front of the toilet, vomiting with tears streaming down his face as visceral memories of torture and guilt assault him.

He starts keeping his distance.

Sam buries himself in routine.

 

* * *

Sam isn't asleep when Dean sits down on the side of his bed, but it's late, probably after one in the morning. He shakes Sam's shoulder. "Hey," he says. "Wake up. I need you to come with me."

Sam sits up and frowns in confusion. Dean is fully dressed, boots and all. "What are we doing?" he asks.

"Don't ask questions," Dean says cryptically. "Just throw some clothes on and come on."

"Dean—"

 _"Come on!_  I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't important."

Sam sighs, but he knows it's true. Dean has been giving him a wide berth, which he assumes means that Dean is tired of trying to fix him. It's just one more thing he's screwed up. He feels around for a button-down to throw on over his tee, and pulls on his jeans and shoes.

"What's going on?" he asks again.

Dean grins at him.

They drive for about five minutes, and then Dean pulls onto a dirt road that looks like private property. Sam frowns at him from the passenger's seat. "Is this a hunt?" he asks.

"Yeah, sort of," Dean says, guiding the Impala over the bumpy drive, headlights cutting like two single beams ahead of them through the pitch-black rural night. He pulls to a stop in the literal middle of nowhere. A long stretch of field spreads out on all sides, hemmed distantly by close-grouped trees and demarcated farmland. He kills the engine but leaves the key in, letting the headlights illuminate a portion of the field.

Dean gives his brother's leg a pat. "Out of the car."

Sam looks at him, eyebrows raised, but complies.

Dean pops the trunk and Sam starts to come around to see what he's doing, but he says, "No. Wait. You stay there a sec."

Sam shakes his head. "Dean. There's nothing out here. What are you—"

Dean presses something into his hand. Then a lighter flicks. A shower of sparks flare up, and Dean points Sam's arm out away from them as the Roman candle erupts in a miracle of colored flame.

A feeling of childlike awe comes over Sam, and suddenly he's twelve years old again.

He looks at Dean, and Dean is smiling in a way he hasn't in so long.

"I love this," Sam says as the candle flames out in his hand.

"I have a whole trunk full. And we have all night. Or until the cops come."

Sam laughs, dropping the remains of the expired firework and stubbing it into the grass with his toe. "Thanks, Dean."

"This is who we are, okay? Not Hell, not any of that. This."

Sam leans back against the car, spreading his hands flat against the hood behind him and reaching back until he can feel the warmth of the engine seep up between his palms and his fingers. Dean leans next to Sam and shoves his hands into his pockets.

"Don't shut me out, Sam. Don't do that. I need you."

He looks up at Dean, his green eyes bright and piercing, and everything in Sam is screaming to look away, to retreat, to hide inside numbness and routine and calculations and pretense. Because it  _hurts._

"Sam?"

He has to clench down on the panic just to get the words out, but he wants this. He wants the warmth of Dean's leg beside his against the Impala, the gentle nudge from Dean's shoulder. He wants his brother. "I'm not okay," he breathes.

Dean reaches an arm around Sam, tugging him into a sideways hug. "Me neither," he says. "Not at all."

Sam nudges him with his knee. "You've never been  _okay,"_  he jokes.

Dean looks down, tears in his eyes, and smiles.


	8. 2012

Dean is running. He can hear footsteps pounding out a rhythm of pursuit behind him on the forest floor. He dodges a tree in his path at the last second. His reflexes are starting to lag, his muscles burning, breath coming more and more shallow. He wills himself to keep running, just long enough to outlast the pack. But they're built for this. He's not. He's prey.

Desperately, he starts looking for a place to duck down and wait them out.

Something trips his foot on the uneven terrain, sending him crashing face-first into leaves and underbrush, and they're on him in a second. One of them turns him over onto his back and the others pin his arms and legs to the ground while Dean fights with every reserve he has left. The leader leans close to Dean's face, a wide grin showing a sharp set of fangs, and Dean hauls back and thrusts his head forward into the vamp's nose.

The blow connects with a satisfying crunch, and Dean feels a grim sense of accomplishment as the thing draws back with a pained yelp, blood flowing from behind the hands it's holding protectively over its face.

"You're gonna pay for that," one of them whispers conspiratorially in Dean's ear, and Dean jerks his head away.

"Yeah? Why don't you blow me," he mutters.

The vamp smiles, and it makes Dean's skin crawl. He struggles against the hands holding him down.

The leader, whose nose Dean broke, steps up to Dean and puts a boot on his chest. He leans forward, increasing the pressure little by little, until Dean can't breathe under its weight. Panic makes him fight harder, but they're stronger.

"We  _are_  going to kill you," he informs Dean, whose fight is weakening as he loses air. "But we're going to bleed you first."

He takes the pressure off Dean's chest, and Dean gasps. His vision is jumpy. Through a dance of black spots, he's aware that one of the vamps pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and exposes his forearm. There are fangs, and there is pain, and Dean thinks he's just screaming but it comes out " _Sam!"_

* * *

_Dean._

Sam is sure it was Dean's voice that woke him up.

Dean needs him. Dean is in trouble. Dean is hurt. Dean is dying. Dean is—

But no. He's not. Because Dean is dead.

Oh God,  _Dean. Dean is dead._

It hits him again, the emptiness, the loss, everything that matters  _gone_ , and he falls back against the pillow to stare, blank-eyed at the ceiling.

"Dean, I'm sorry, I can't do this without you." His voice is a whisper by the time he trails off, and his eyes slide closed because he's talking to an empty room.

There's nobody to care if he lets tears fall unchecked from the corners of his eyes to pool at the sides of his face. And once the tears have started, he can't turn them off, not that he doesn't see the point in trying. He gives in to the raw, racking sobs that leave him feeling drained and hopeless.

He stares at the ceiling. Then he pulls on jeans and a shirt and heads outside, because there's only one place he wants to be when it's this bad, and that's inside the familiar interior of the Impala.

Sometimes he lets himself fall asleep in the back seat, his hip and back habitually sliding into the familiar dips and crevices and bringing his elbow up under his head. He'll close his eyes and turn his face into the seat, letting his breath spill out over the aged mustiness of the upholstery. But tonight, he gets into the driver's seat and turns the key, feeling the vibration of the engine wrap around him until he's numb. Distant and numb.

_Drive,_  his mind urges him.  _Just go. Drive._

And numbly, Sam complies.

He drives through the night and into morning, tears tracking down his face unacknowledged. He just drives. The sound of passing cars and rushing wind feel like it's echoing across something jagged and gaping inside of him.

Then it happens.

The flash of movement darts out in into his path, and he brings his foot down hard on the brake. The rear of the car swerves. There's a bump, and he hears a yelp, and then something limps to the side of the road.

_Oh God._

Adrenaline is shooting through him, all traces of numbness gone. His senses are hyper-aware.

The dog folds itself onto the side of the road, its legs collapsing like cardboard. Sam can hear it trembling and whining. He can see blood matting the fur on its side.

Hands shaking, Sam goes around to the trunk and he finds the blanket they've always kept there, its coarse, nubby texture bringing back all the times Dean has wrapped this blanket around  _him_  to ward off hypothermia or shock. He approaches the dog slowly, holding out one hand non-threateningly. He speaks to it soothingly, and the dog inches away, whimpering, eyes darting anxiously. But Sam stays steady and calm, keeps his voice low, and holds his hand is in front of the dog's nose until it lets him bring his hand along the back of its head.

"Okay," Sam says, more to himself than the dog, "It's okay. You're going to be okay. We can do this."

He tucks the blanket around the dog, wincing as it whimpers at the contact with its injuries, and carries it gently to the back seat of the Impala.

The dog looks up at Sam warily but oddly trusting, and Sam runs a hand over the silky side of its face and along its ear. "I'm sorry," he says sincerely. "This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault."

As he drives, he keeps looking back at the dog. The dog whimpers and whines, but it always meets Sam's eyes in the rear view mirror as if it's trusting him. "You're going to be okay," Sam promises over and over. By the time he finds an animal hospital, he almost believes it.

 

* * *

The receptionist follows Sam out the door. "Hey," she calls. "Sam, right?"

He turns around. "That's right. Did I—forget to…?"

"No, no, you're fine." She walks up to him, glancing back at the building behind her, then smiles kindly. "I just wanted to tell you, don't take it personally. Doctor Richardson. She's… always like that."

Sam chuckles. "Okay. Thanks. I guess. I mean… I did kind of deserve it."

"No." The receptionist puts a hand on Sam's arm, and Sam looks at her in surprise at the unexpected contact. "No, Sam. You didn't. It wasn't your fault. You more than made up for any role you had in it. Don't keep trying to punish yourself. It.. it doesn't make sense. You know?"

Sam frowns, then nods and forces a smile, and the receptionist looks a little embarrassed. "Sorry," she mumbles, "None of my business, I know. I just… Amelia overreacts sometimes and…"

"No," Sam assures her as she turns to go back inside. "Really. Thank you."

He drops back into the driver's seat of the Impala and his hands find the well-worn position on the wheel where Dean's hands have been so many times before. He closes his eyes. He misses Dean so much. The urge to drive and keep driving until the pain disappears is overwhelming.

But the dog is going to need a place to recover. He should get a place. Someplace nearby.

It's not the dog's fault, after all.

Maybe he can fix the dog. Maybe… they can fix each other.

 

* * *

Dean feels a hand grasp his hair and yank his head up off his chest. It's a shitty way to regain consciousness. "F…fuck," he moans.

"Oh good, you're alive."

Dean squints. " _Benny?_   's that you?" He tries to move, and discovers that his arms are bound above his head, and moving sets off a firestorm of pain through his body. _"Nngh!"_

"Don't get excited," Benny says. "They've got you strung up here like Christmas dinner. Might take me a sec." Dean blinks past the grey in his vision and sees Benny working at a network of thickly knotted ropes that are holding him.

"How did I…"

"Might not want to put much into talking, either," his friend says. "From the looks of you, I'd say you're at least a couple of quarts low. Just sit tight and let me save your ass."

Dean's pulse is racing. He knows he's lost blood. He knows he owes Benny his life. Again. How many times now?

He lets his head fall back to his chest while Benny works to free him.

_Hurry, Sam,_ he thinks.  _You've got to get me out of here._


	9. 2012 (Post-Purgatory)

They aren't nightmares, exactly. Not like Sam's. And like his nightmares of Hell, which had been a visceral retelling of sight, sound, smell, pain, and guilt that broke him in ways Alistair never could. After purgatory, Dean doesn't so much wake up as he  _comes to,_  rolling into a defensive position with his heart hammering in his throat, finding that he's already grabbed the knife from under his pillow and is holding it out in front of him ready to face down a horde of attackers.

Awareness catches up a few seconds later, bringing with it the realization that he's crouching on the floor of their hotel room with a knife in his hand in the middle of the night.

He lowers the knife and runs a hand over his face. "Shit," he mutters.

He'd woken up this way in purgatory, but it made sense there. He was usually surrounded by something angry or hungry and needed to come up fighting. Normal sleep patterns didn't seem very willing to just reset after spending a year on high alert.

One night, he brings himself to consciousness beside his bed again, knife in hand, and notices Sam standing pressed into the corner, holding his arms tightly over his chest, watching Dean intently.

Dean squints and blinks away sleep, thinking this might be the tail end of whatever dream woke him up. "Sam?"

Sam wraps his arms tighter around himself, as if he's trying to make himself smaller. "It's cold," he says in a quick, hushed whisper. "Dean, it's cold. It's so cold here."

"Yeah," Dean says, coming over to Sam and reaching out to take him by the arm. "I guess it is. Let's get you back to—"

Sam jerks back at the touch. His eyes are wide but blank. This is sadly familiar. "No-no, please. Please, don't, hurts."

Dean's heart sinks. They're back to this. It feels like so many steps back. "Sam. You're cold because you need to get back to bed. Okay? Come on, man."

He's tired. He doesn't want to do this anymore. He just wants one good night's sleep. He grabs Sam's arm and pulls him toward the bed.

Sam recoils and screams. And God, it's a scream that Dean recognizes. Alistair taught him. He clutches Sam's arms and shouts at him. "Sam, dammit, stop! You're not  _there_  anymore!"

Sam breaks free of Dean's hold, stumbling back, pressing himself against the wall, and Dean feels his own tentative grip on the situation weakening. He needs to scream too, to release something primal that's been building in him over the past year, and he can't be in the same room with Sam's panic. He can't. He'll lose whatever he has left of himself.

Dean leaves his brother completely unhinged and barricades himself in the bathroom.

He can hear Sam's pained screams through the wall. He stares at the tile between them, helplessness building, and then he hauls back and drives a fist into the wall. "Fuck!" he yells as bright pain explodes through his knuckles, and he hits the wall again, and again, leaving bloody streaks against the blue and white pattern.

"Just once, just this once, can't you be there for me? I  _needed_  you. Sam, why didn't you  _try?"_   It occurs to him that he's not really talking about nightmares anymore, and he doesn't care. He's so tired of holding out hope for help that isn't coming, having to be the one who always fixes everything.

He realizes the screaming has stopped on the other side of the door. He sighs. He looks at the swelling and damaged skin on his hand and swipes it against his sweat pants, clenching and unclenching his fist just to make sure it's not broken. It's not. He reaches out and turns the knob to go see how bad Sam's mess is.

A blast of cold air meets him outside the bathroom. The door to the hotel room is standing wide open, gusts of wind carrying fresh snow in to drift in over the beige carpet where Sam's boots sit neatly side-by-side. Sam's cell is on the table, his coat is still slung over the back of the chair by the table.

Sam is gone.

Dean shivers and hurries to the open door, leaning to look outside, his bare feet shrinking from the icy contact with the snow on the floor. "Sam!" he shouts. "Dammit! Shit. Where the fuck did you go?"

Continuing to curse to keep the panic and guilt in check, he quickly jams his feet into his shoes and pulls on his coat over his pajamas. It's dark, and the temperature is well below freezing. As soon as he steps outside, the wind seems to blow straight through him. There's no relief from this kind of cold. The thought of Sam out in it unprotected makes Dean's stomach drop.

"Why, Sam? Why'd you have to do this?"

He shoves his hands into his coat pockets and jogs to the edge of the parking lot, peering through the swirling wind and darkness for any sign of Sam or an indication of which way he might have gone. There's nothing. The snow is like powder, too icy and impermanent to pack into footprints, and the wind is viciously whipping the tiny particles up and smoothing them over as quickly as they fall. He calls out for Sam until he's hoarse, until his skin is numb and red with cold, but Sam is nowhere.

Dean pulls out his cell and dials Benny, turning his back to the wind and holding his shoulder up against the phone to shield it from the onslaught of the elements. "Benny!" he says with relief, hearing the voice he's counted on so many times. "Man, I need help. I can't find my brother!"

 

 

* * *

Sam stumbles, tripping on his own numb toes and slipping on ice concealed beneath drifts of snow on the concrete. He falls to his knees, catching himself on hands that are already scraped and bleeding. His breath comes in short, quick gasps, puffs of white in the dark night. He's beyond cold. He's shaking so hard he can barely see.

Lucifer hasn't found him yet, that's good.

He should stay here, not move, not make a sound. He should make himself as small as possible and hide. But that never works. It's never worked. Not ever. And hiding means anger, anger means burning, and the burning is so much worse than the cold. A small whimper escapes him, and he brings his hand up to clamp over his mouth.

It's so cold. It's always so cold. He needs to keep moving. He forces himself to stand, his cold, pale feet twisting awkwardly and leaving odd swatches of red on the ice as he lurches forward.

 

 

* * *

Benny puts his hands on Dean's shoulders and makes him look him in the eye. "Steady, mate," he says. "It's just tracking. You've tracked a black dog in the dead of night without the light of a single star to show the way."

 _But Sam is out there._ Dean takes a breath. "Tracking. Yeah."

He hands Dean his flashlight and pack loaded with first aid supplies. "It's dark. It's cold. And it's hopeless. Any bit of that sound familiar?"

Dean nods and a ghost of a smile flashes over his lips. "Maybe a little."

"You've found things that didn't want to be found in weather worse than this, am I right? Beauty of this is, there's not likely to be anything out there in suburbia trying to take our heads off at the same time."

"Thanks again for this, Benny. I didn't know—"

"Nah, thank me later. Let's move."

Dean steps outside the door and exhales, letting his sharpened instincts snap back into place. He waits, tilts his head, silent and sensing.  _The clues will find him. The trail will come to him._

Almost immediately, it's there. Laid out in the snow as plainly as if it were a glowing neon sign. "This way!" he calls to Benny behind him.

 

 

* * *

He finds Sam curled into a tight ball in an alley against a dumpster and drops down onto his knees in the drifts of snow, fumbling to drag the gloves off his numb fingers and unzip the pack so he can unfold the mylar blanket and get it around Sam. Because Sam isn't moving. Sam's lips are blue and there are ice crystals on the tips of his eyelashes, and his exposed arms are pale and cold under the thin, white t-shirt Sam is wearing.

"Sam. Sam, can you hear me?" he asks. He presses both hands to Sam's cold cheeks, to his throat to feel for Sam's pulse, to reassure himself that Sam is alive. Sam's head rolls to the side under Dean's touch. "Sam, come on. Wake up, man. Need to get you back someplace warm, okay? Just hang in there."

He leans his unconscious brother forward toward him, bringing the thin, silvery material of the emergency blanket around Sam's shoulders and wraps it protectively around his cold arms, rubbing the outside of it to try and get the circulation back into his limbs.

Sam gasps and flinches, and Dean keeps his arms around Sam while he struggles weakly, trying to draw back away from him. "You're with me, Sam. It's just me." He bends down so Sam can see his face. "Just me. I know. I know, I'm touching you, and touch hurts, and you're scared, I get it. But it's just me. Not Lucifer. Not Hell. Me, Sam."

Sam is shaking, his blue lips trembling. He squints and brings a hand up to grasp the collar of Dean's coat. "'s c-co-cold, D-Dean," he whispers.

"I know it's cold, Sam. It's really cold." He looks behind him down the street where Benny should be following, and mutters, "Too fucking cold." He looks back at Sam, concern filling his eyes. "Sam, we've got to get you back to the hotel. Can you stand?"

He doesn't wait for Sam to answer. Keeping the blanket wrapped tightly around Sam's arms, he hauls Sam up and steadies him. Sam drops to his knees.

"So-sorry, I-I c-c—"

"It's okay, it's okay," Dean says quickly. He yells out toward the street, "Benny!" and Sam flinches. "Dammit." He bends down to adjust the blanket around Sam. Then he sees the damage Sam's done to his feet and he breathes, "Oh,  _shit,_  Sam."

Dean doesn't even really think about what he's doing, he just knows Sam is bleeding and he can't walk like this. He kneels in the snow beside Sam and eases Sam back so that he's sitting, his feet out in front of him, and he clasps a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Sam," he says. "I need to level with you, okay? I need to talk to  _rational_ Sam for a minute. Okay? Is that possible?"

Sam presses his lips together and swallows, and nods, leaning forward over his knees and shaking from his core.

Dean finds a roll of gauze in the first aid pouch and holds it out in front of Sam. "I need to get something over the gashes in your feet, otherwise you're gonna screw them up even worse. It's gonna hurt, Sam, but  _I'm not hurting you._  Okay? It's cold here, and you're gonna feel pain for a minute, but this is not the cage. You got that, Sam? You're not there. There are things about this that are different. I want you to remember how it's  _different._  Just like we talked about. Can you do that?"

Sam breathes in, and Dean sees his brother steeling himself,  _his brother_  who went to Stanford and should have been a lawyer, and something in Sam flickers in response to the logic, the light of reason pushing aside the shroud of nightmare and forcing the pieces to line up. Seeing that in Sam breaks Dean's heart all over again. Sam nods through his trembling. "Think s-so."

"Okay, good, that's good, Sam. Just keep telling yourself what's happening, what's really happening, not what you're feeling." He looks up, giving the alleyway one more scan for Benny, for his backup. But it's just him. Dean shuts his eyes for a second and then turns his attention on Sam.

Some of the cuts are deep. He winces as he pieces the skin back together and wraps the gauze around each of Sam's feet, knowing it's going to hurt like hell when he has to put those stitches in, and he's thankful on some level that Sam is so cold right now that he can't feel much of anything. On the other hand, that scares the shit out of him.

"Dean."

"Doing okay, Sam?"

"Is that wh-what you do? How y-you m-make it s-stop?"

Dean just looks at him. Then finishes wrapping the gauze over the worst of the scrapes. "My brain's not broken, kiddo."

"S-something is."

"Hey, brother!" It's Benny. He's coming toward them at quick jog, and Dean holds up a hand to signal him as he rises to his feet beside his brother.

"Here! Benny, here. I've got Sam. He's in rough shape."

"Alive ain't rough. Alive's… alive. Here," Benny holds out a hand to Sam. "I know a two-man job when I see one."

Sam looks up at Dean, uncertain. Then sees the relief clearly etched in his brother's face, and he lets Benny take hold of one of his arms as Dean takes the other.


	10. 2013

Sleep eludes Dean.

He stands just outside their hotel room, trying to block out the distant, phantom screams of the past year—hell, the past lifetime—that echo through his head. Sam is inside, asleep maybe, he hopes. And maybe this time it will stick.

Maybe. Hopefully. He utters a short, humorless laugh and looks up at the clear, cold night sky, dotted with stars. There are no answers there. He automatically locates the constellations he and Sam know, ticking through his mental checklist of familiar outlines and finding a strange comfort in the simple ritual. Maybe if he hangs out in front of the hotel all night, then Sam will sleep. At least one of them should.

He can't keep doing this.

"Dean."

He turns and sees Sam in the open doorway, shifting to tuck his arms around himself and pull his coat closed. Dean smiles grimly. "So, not sleeping." It's not a question.

Sam shrugs. "Not so much. What about you?"

"Tryin' to quit," he jokes lamely, and Sam humors him with a smile.

"Okay," Sam says, coming over to stand beside Dean. "I've been trying to figure out how to say this to you without getting the trademarked Dean Winchester eye-roll and brush-off, but there's just no way around it. So let's have it. Talk, man."

"Talk."

"Yeah, Dean. Come on. Tell me about the dreams.

"They're not dreams, they're flashb— And I don't 'talk,' Sam, so forget it. Thanks anyway."

"It can help. I can… I'm here for you, I just want you to know that."

"Oh,  _Jesus!"_  Dean flung a hand up in exasperation and stepped away, turning back to glare at Sam. "Are you kidding me with this? Just, don't. Seriously."

Sam clutched his arms tighter around himself. "So, what then? Go on like this, not sleeping? Or waking up screaming in the middle of the night?"

"I don't—"

"You  _do._  Dean, do you think I don't hear you? Do you think you're fooling me when you go lock yourself in the bathroom and run the water for an hour? Because I can hear you crying—"

"Shut up." Dean's hands are balled into fists, and he's forgotten to breathe.

"—and yeah, I leave you alone because I _know_ you, and you don't want me to see, but fuck this, Dean. Fuck all of it."

Dean is glaring at his feet because he can't look at Sam, because he's been inches from breaking down for weeks, maybe months, and he'll see the permission to go ahead and do it in Sam's eyes. Go ahead and be brought down by this coiled spring of acid brought on by so much fear and tension and killing, and  _scream,_  maybe never stop screaming. And then what will be left to hold either of them up anymore?

"You can't bury it," Sam says. "It comes out. It always comes out. I know."

He laughs then, bitterly, derisively. "Oh,  _I know_  you know. Trust me. I've been taking care of your crazy long enough to know that shit can't be buried."

Sam's head jerks back as if he's been slapped, and Dean's glad. He meant it to hurt, delivered it like a blow to drive his brother away, at least get him to shut the hell up and stop opening wounds that he was trying to let fester in peace. But Sam recovers quickly, his eyebrows drawing together and tilting his head to stare intensely at Dean.

"I know," he says too quietly, and that just makes Dean's chest ache in remorse.

"Sam, look…"

Sam shakes his head and swallows. "What about… can you talk to Benny?"

"What—Benny? What do you mean? About  _feelings_  and crap? Fuck no! Sam…"

"I want you to be able to talk to somebody. So if it's not me. If you… can't trust me, or if we… you know, if things have changed, if it's that different between us…"

Dean feels the edge of his anger suddenly go dull, and he looks up at his little brother, still with his arms tucked defensively around himself, his large hands digging into the armpits for warmth. Sam's not looking at him. His eyes are glassy, rimmed with tears that haven't fallen, and fixed on a point far above them, on the stars, the familiar constellations of a thousand night skies they once shared.

"It's important," Sam said. "You need something… someone… to hold on to, sometimes. You know?"

He closes his eyes for a second, a fraction of a second longer than a blink, and the tears fall. He turns his head quickly, bringing a hand up to brush them away, and Dean pretends he didn't see.

He thinks about how funny it is to hear Sam lecture  _him_  on being okay. And then something slams into him like a ton of bricks.

"Who do  _you_  have, Sam?"

Sam looks at him, confused. "You," he says. "I have you."

"That's not what I mean. When I was gone, who… ?"

"Oh." Sam looks down. "Dean, don't. This is about you."

"I want to know, Sam. You said there was a girl. Amelia. Were you close to her?"

"We…" Something like pain flickers in Sam's eyes. "We needed each other. For a while."

"And then?"

"Dean."

"You needed  _me_  and I wasn't here," he guesses.

"Not your fault," Sam says quickly.

"No. Right. I know. Still. Was it okay? Were you… okay?"

"I… kind of lost my mind a little," Sam admits, allowing a nervous half-smile that fades quickly, "thinking you were dead. Amelia got me through it."

"Yeah. Benny… he helped me, too. He saved my life, too many times to count."

Sam takes a breath and looks back up at the stars. "Amelia saved mine." Dean waits for him to elaborate further, but instead he says, "I guess what I'm saying is. I understand if it's not me you want to confide in anymore, I get that. If it's Benny , if he can… I don't know… fill that void for you, or…"

Dean takes hold of Sam's arm gently but firmly, pulling him around to face him. "There's no void."

Sam nods, tears brimming unacknowledged in his eyes again. "You sure?"

"I'm positive. Okay? You and me, we're good, Sam. It's been rough, I know that. But I'll get over it. Like I always do. Like  _we_  always do. Look at everything we've been through, you really think a year apart is gonna do us in?"

Without a word, Sam reaches an arm out and pulls Dean into an all-out hug, and Dean finds himself squeezing back, hard and reassuring.

It doesn't make the darkness disappear, but every new nightmare is just one more thing they face together, knowing that daylight is never more than a few hours behind.


End file.
